Subscribe to this blog

Receive Email Updates

Sade - Ahoy Hallen, Rotterdam,1984 (Re-loaded)

This is Sade performing live at Ahoy Hallen, Rotterdam, back on the 21st September 1984. This was a few months after her single 'Your Love Is King' launched her successful musical career.

Her web sites biography includes the following - Music was not her first choice as a career. She studied fashion at St Martin's School Of Art and only began singing after two old school friends with a fledgling group approached her to help them out with the vocals.

Somewhat to her surprise, she found that while the singing made her nervous, she enjoyed writing songs. Two years later she had overcome her stage fright and was regularly singing back up with a North London Latin funk band called Pride. "I used to get on stage with Pride, like, shaking. I was terrified. But I was determined to try my best, and I decided that if I was going to sing, I would sing the way I speak, because it's important to be yourself."

Sade served a long apprenticeship on the road with Pride. For three years, from 1981, she and the other seven members of the band toured the UK, often with her driving. Pride's shows featured a segment in which Sade fronted a quartet that played quieter, jazzier numbers. One of these, a song called Smooth Operator, which Sade had co-written herself, attracted the attention of record company talent scouts. Soon, everybody wanted to sign her, but not the rest of Pride. Obstinately loyal to her friends in the group, Sade refused to depart. 18 months later she relented and signed to Epic records - on condition that she took with her the three band mates who still comprise the entity known as Sade: saxophonist Stuart Matthewman, keyboard player Andrew Hale, and bassist Paul Denman.

Sade's first single, Your Love Is King, became a top 10 British hit in February 1984, and with that her life, and that of the band, changed forever.